Little Acts of Defiance
by SaintAugustana
Summary: Bael, the fifth Bielski child, gets into a bit of trouble at the base camp, and Tuvia must acknowledge both his duties as Commander of the Otriad and patriarch of the Bielski family in dealing with the matter. Warning: spanking/cp/corporal punishment.


**Defiance Fanfic**

The fighting lasted mere seconds: as soon as Bael found herself engulfed in the smoke of a dozen other hungry children, she was pulled out again – Tuvia's strong, iron grip tightened around the collar of her fraying pea coat and yanked her bodily from the suddenly frightened mangle of abashed and awe-struck youngsters, some of which quickly retreated to the safety of their mothers' skirts.

Before her own fear of her brother's wrath could set in, Bael quickly stuffed the wholesome chunk of bread she'd been protecting into the pocket of her coat and cast malicious glares at the other mongrels.

"What is this?" Tuvia demanded, giving Bael a good shake. She winced, ducking her head uncomfortably. No one seemed brave enough to answer, but upon hearing him yell soundly a second time, a brash boy pointed his grubby finger at Bael and exclaimed in thick Jewish accent, "she's getting extra rations of food, sir, my friends and I saw her!"

"Liar!" Bael retorted loudly, breaking from Tuvia's grip to tackle the rat, who collapsed to the ground with a weighty thud, eliciting more yelps and shouts from the young audience, and rousing Zus from his post; he came sprinting to the scene just as Tuvia was separating the two children, and quickly reacted, wrapping a thickly-muscled limb around his sister's wiry frame and hauling her away beneath his arm, Tuvia following alongside.

Bael struggled most of the way back to the small cabin hut she shared with her older brothers.

"Put me down, Zus, come on," she squirmed. He dropped her unceremoniously on her feet between himself and Tuvia, who appeared thoroughly furious. Bael opened her mouth to protest, but Zus cut her off.

"Shut up. What did she do this time?" Zus questioned of his older brother.

"I-I can explain-" Bael attempted to slide as far away as possible from the men, but Tuvia yanked her back by the front lapels of her coat and held her firm, glaring at her with unmatched fury, and pulled her into the hut.

"You've been stealing food," he began, more stating than asking.

"She _what?" _Fantastic, now Zus was angry. Though it had taken him longer than the rest to warm to Tuvia as Commander of the Otriad, he was, if possible, _less_ tolerant of rule breakers, especially thieves.

"No!" Bael protested, backing into a table.

"No?" Tuvia advanced, his expression menacing and shocked. "So that boy was just making up big stories then? Got into a fight with you for no reason at all?"

Bael glanced toward Zus for possible cover, but found no comfort in his equally disappointed gaze.

"Turn out your pockets!"

The eleven-year-old cringed, and swallowed back a wad of buttery saliva. Fighting back tears, she reached a dirty hand into her left pocket and pulled free from it's depths a small lump of bread, crumbs scraping off against the fabric and colliding with the rustic wooden floorboards below her boots.

Tuvia's body seemed to deflate, but his expression grew more fierce. He turned away quickly and found an open space in the room to rest his arm against the logged wall. Sensing he needed time to calm down, lest he rip his baby sister into tiny pieces, Zus stepped forward, took the bread, and led Bael by the arm to his cot. He took a seat across her on Tuvia's cot. Ashamed and afraid of his unpleasant wrath, Bael averted her eyes to the floor and continued to cry quietly, for she knew what was likely coming to her.

"We're all hungry, Bael," Zus whispered. "We have to be patient for our food to be given to us, in equal shares."

Unable to speak, Bael just nodded.

Tuvia had calmed a bit. "No one, _no_ one in this community goes against my orders, and I'll certainly not have my own sister setting the example like a common street thief! Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir," Bael answered respectfully, looking hesitantly up at his icy blue eyes, hard as flint.

"Get it through your thick skull, yeah?" Tuvia ordered, tapping Zus on the shoulder. Together, they exited.

"What are you going to do?" Zus inquired once they were outside, pushing his hands into his pockets.

"What did Papa used to do?" Tuvia sighed, already aware the answer as he thought back to those awful moments of chastisement by their beloved father – usually involving a switch applied to bare backside. "God, I don't know if I can do that to her," he coughed, then leered at his brother, "and don't give me any crap about 'not being able to do what needs to be done.' If it were you, you'd feel the same."

"Probably, but I'd save it until it was over with," Zus clapped him on the back and disappeared around the side of the hut, returning with one of the thin, flexible wooden rods some of the women had collected for warming small portions of meat over the flames. "Plus, I wouldn't need _that_ to make a point. You should have seen her last week when I smacked her for wandering off. She was crying after ten, and it was just my hand."

"You're not very reassuring, Zus."

"You wanted this job, Tuvia," he grinned lightly and headed off.

Tuvia licked his lips, staring at the thing in his hand.

Bael, who had been shuffling uncomfortably on the cot since his departure, started when the door was shoved open again, and expelled a gaspy breath at the sight of the cane.

"This will not happen again, do you understand?" Tuvia pointed the rod at her uneaten prize.

Bael nodded slowly.

Tuvia nodded, too, and pulled the small, square table into the center of the room and tapping it twice with a single finger. Bael stood, her pale face glistening with salty tears, which she tried to shove away with the back of her coat sleeve.

"Trousers down."

The got the tears coming again, as the girl realized how much worse it was going to hurt without the protection of the thick canvas. Her thin underpants would do little against the sharp blows. She obeyed, however, and gingerly lowered herself over the cool, hard surface of the table.

Outside, Zus listened to Bael gasp as the first lick smacked her backside.

"Count them," Tuvia ordered, ever the stickler for driving a lesson home.

Bael swallowed, blinking back a deluge. "O-One."

Tuvia landed another biting lick, and another, and another, eliciting small gasps of pain from his charge, raising strips of dust on her seat.

By the fourth stinging wallop, Bael had begun whimpering, and by the fifth, involuntarily squirming.

"Six!" She cried, stuffing a fist into her mouth, suddenly self-conscious about how pathetic she probably sounded.

"Sevah!"

"Get your hand out of your mouth, I can't hear you."

"S-seven. AhOW eight!"

Two more, and Tuvia relented to the sobbing child lying nearly bare across his kitchen table. Stoic though he was, he allowed himself to offer what comfort he could, leaning the cane against the edge of the table, placing a warm hand upon her back and scrubbing soothingly at her shoulders. Bael continued to cry into her folded arms, her hair sticky with sweat.

"Come on, up," Tuvia finally ordered, though softer than usual.

Bael remained as she was for a few seconds, then shook her head, an act of defiance Tuvia was not prepared for. He wrapped his fingers around the cane again and smacked his unruly sister once more, on the backs of her thighs. She yelped and quickly stumbled to her feet, whimpering as her canvas pants chafed the burning skin.

Sniffling awkwardly, Bael glanced up hesitantly.

Tuvia scrutinized her for a moment, but as his protective instinct began to overwhelm him (which it did more often than he liked), he felt warm wetness pricking at the rims of eyes, and before either of them could fight it, he pulled Bael into his chest and held her firmly as she continued to cry into his chest.

When her breaths began to heave with the weight of words stuck in her throat, Tuvia pushed her out to arm's length.

"Stop this crying now, before you choke on your words."

Bael only nodded quickly, closing her eyes against the tears until they ceased to spill. When she went to open them again, her eyelids burned and the salty remains blurred her vision. Tuvia snatched a cloth rag from the table and scrubbed at her tear-streaked cheeks.

"I-I'm sorry, Tuvia..." Bael grimaced as he continued to rub her dirty face.

"It's over now, _Liebe,_" he tossed the rag away, kissed her soft brown locks, and led her outside.

Zus was leaning against the weathered wall of the hut, smoking a cigarette and fingering the loading tray on his rifle. Tuvia pulled a reluctant Bael from the private safety of the cabin and into the fresh, new spring air.

"It went well, then?" He grinned.

"Not for her," Tuvia joked. Bael scowled. Having brothers so much older than she was was like having an extra pair of fathers: hyper-competitive, warrior fathers. Asael and Aron she only thought of as siblings.

"Will you take her to the creek and have her bathe?" Tuvia asked, in a tone that sounded suspiciously order-like.

"She'll only dirty herself again working," Zus reasoned, exhaling a stream of smoke.

"Yes, and soon they'll be asking why we have a Negro child building our fires."

Zus shrugged, but stamped his shortened stick into the ground with one boot. "Why do I have to take her – she knows where it is."

"Don't I get any say in this?" Bael piped up from between them.

"No," Tuvia and Zus shot back.

"Because you know she'll wander away playing unless someone's watching her."

"I do not!"

"Hush!"

Zus mumbled something inaudible around clenched teeth, but hiked his gun higher around his shoulder and pulled Bael forward by her neck.

Tuvia stifled a smug smile as they trodded off.

"Hey, I did the hard part!"

Zus stuck up a single, gloved finger.


End file.
